Image Server: One Size Fits All

By rendering images at different sizes automatically and supporting special effects like borders, text overlays, and zooming, TrueSpectra Image Server 4.0 ($8,500 per CPU) can simplify any Web site's control of images. The principle is simple: Instead of creating different versions of the same image, the program lets you reuse the same high-resolution images, which are rendered on the fly using simple HTML extensions.

We set up Image Server on Windows 2000 Server with IIS. (The product also supports Solaris and Apache Web Server.) Installation was effortless. A Web-based adminstration tool let us configure virtual directories, caching, and logging options.

The real appeal of Image Server lies in its winning design tools. Six Web-based wizards help create different versions of high-resolution artwork. We tested the product with 100 images, as well as some photographs, to get a sense of how the program rendered content. A core feature here is the Image URL Generator wizard, which let us resize images. You can preview your changes and then paste the resulting URL (which supersedes the "normal" IMG tag) into your HTML.

Support for basic effects is rich. You can overlay text onto images (for advertising featured products, for example) and add shadows and borders easily. Advanced effects include support for zooming content on the fly using DHTML. Users can zoom in using navigation buttons (or the mouse); there is also support for "spinning" an image to render a 360-degree view of a product without a separate plug-in.

A separate Java-based design applet uses Sun's Swing interface to present a full-fledged application inside a browser. Support for resizing, rotating, and adding shadows and text overlays is integrated here. We also liked that you could browse images inside Web directories using preview mode, then select images to edit using the Java tool. Content management options such as uploading, copying, or deleting images would be a welcome feature.

No knowledge of the underlying tags is required because the wizards automate the creation of all special tags. For developers who need more, there is full access to the underlying Image Server APIs, including support for SOAP and Web services.

Richard V. Dragan, a contributing editor of PC Magazine, has written over 250 articles and reviews for the magazine and other Ziff Davis publications since 1992. From 1994 to 1998 he authored a programming column for Computer Shopper. He has taught C++ and Windows programming at Columbia University since 1990, and Java since 1997.
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